BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
Almost as soon as a collapsing bridge forced the government of President Hugo Chávez Frías to shut down the only highway linking Venezuela’s main airport and capital city of Caracas in January 2006, the recriminations began. Chávez’s opponents accused him of wasting the country’s oil bonanza on politically driven projects abroad while neglecting infrastructure at home. His supporters, in turn, charged the traditional elite that governed before him with squandering resources and ignoring fundamental needs for decades. In fact, both sets of charges were nearly identical. And both were right. Venezuela’s leaders, Chávez as well as his predecessors, have long been guilty of misplaced priorities. While a new bridge has since been erected, they all share the responsibility for failing to maintain what is arguably the most important stretch of road in Venezuela, Latin America’s most polarized society.
Just before Chávez took office in February 1999, Gabriel García Márquez accompanied him on a flight to Caracas from Havana, Cuba, where the Venezuelan president-elect had visited with Fidel Castro. “I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men,” the Colombian Nobel laureate later wrote. “One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot.” Nearly nine years later, these “two opposing men” live on in the minds of Chávez’s supporters and opponents.
To his most ardent backers in Venezuela and among the international left, Chávez is a hero driven by humanitarian impulses to redress social injustice and inequality—problems long neglected by a traditional political class intent on protecting its own position while denying the masses their rightful share of wealth
and meaningful political participation. He is bravely fighting for Latin American solidarity and standing up to the overbearing United States. With charisma and oil dollars, he is seizing an opportunity to correct the power and wealth imbalances that have long defined Venezuelan and hemispheric affairs.
To his opponents—the embattled domestic opposition and many in Washington—Chávez is a power-hungry dictator who disregards the rule of law and the democratic process. He is on a catastrophic course of extending state control over the economy, militarizing politics, eliminating dissent, cozying up to rogue regimes, and carrying out wrongheaded social programs that will set Venezuela back. He is an authoritarian whose vision and policies have no redeeming qualities, and a formidable menace to his own people, his Latin American neighbors, and US interests.
These caricatures have defined the poles of a debate that has obscured the reality of the Chávez phenomenon—and thwarted the development of a sound response to him. Chávez’s appeal cannot be explained without acknowledging the deep dissatisfaction with the existing political and economic order felt by much of the population in Venezuela and throughout much of the rest of Latin America, the world’s most unequal region. Chávez’s claims that he could remedy Venezuelans’ legitimate grievances won him the support of many in the region.
But Chávez’s policy ideas are mostly dubious. Despite the record oil profits that are funding social spending, his initiatives have yielded only very modest gains. His autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies have undermined governance and the democratic process in Venezuela. Still, his seductive political project has offered a measure of hope to many, and his critics have proved chronically inept: Every effort to challenge him, both domestically and internationally, has failed, and usually ended up making him stronger in the process. Chávez’s opponents in Venezuela and abroad have spent much time and effort condemning the model he claims to represent, but far too little time and effort putting forward a model of their own. Until they do, Chávez will likely continue to have the upper hand.
ALÓ, PRESIDENTE
Venezuela was ripe for major change when Chávez was elected president in 1998. For 40 years, an alliance of two parties—Democratic Action and the Christian Democratic Party—had dominated the political order. By the 1970s, both were rightly considered guilty of chronic corruption and mismanagement; the exclusionary political system they managed was wholly divorced from the central concerns of most Venezuelans. The fact of ample oil wealth (Venezuela is the world’s sixth largest exporter) only deepened the population’s rage.
During the 1980s and 1990s, no South American country deteriorated more than Venezuela. Its GDP fell some 40 percent. In February 1992, with unrest already widespread, Chávez, a lieutenant colonel and former paratrooper, led a military coup against the government. Although the coup failed and Chávez spent the next two years in prison, his bold defiance catapulted him onto the national political stage and launched his career.
When Chávez entered politics six years later his combative style and straight talking populist charisma served him well in a country marked by pervasive discontent. His fierce indictment of the old political order—and his promise of a “revolution” in honor of South America’s liberator, Simon Bolívar—held wide appeal among poor Venezuelans. Unlike the “out of touch” politicians, Chávez projected a sincere concern for those living in poverty. In Venezuela, that meant three-quarters of the population.
Chávez’s political project has been an eclectic blend of populism, nationalism, militarism, and, most recently, socialism, combined with a “Bolivarian” emphasis on South American unity. Chávez sees himself as the embodiment of the popular will. “Participatory democracy,” focused on empowering and mobilizing Venezuelans, is the essence of Chavismo. Behind democratic trappings and a fig leaf of legitimacy, Chávez has concentrated power to an astonishing degree. Although he benefited considerably from the complete collapse of the old order, he has also proved to be an astute and skilled politician, despite being frequently dismissed
as a mere buffoon. He has constructed his edifice of power through a succession of elections, including a 1999 referendum for a new constitution. That new “Bolivarian” constitution allowed consecutive reelection for the president and set up an electoral council that is a fourth branch of government.
The contours of Chávez’s “illiberal” regime have become increasingly better defined over the past eight years. Virtually all key decisions are in the hands of the president. The rule of law is, at best, peripheral. The Electoral Council and the National Assembly have become mere appendages of the executive. In May 2004, Chávez took advantage of majority support in the National Assembly to have a measure passed that increased the number of Supreme Court justices from 20 to 32, thus allowing him to pack the court with handpicked political loyalists.
To be sure, dissent is permitted, and some private media still criticize Chávez. But instruments have been put in place to clamp down, if deemed necessary, on critical voices. Chávez’s decision not to renew the license of the critical RCTV station significantly reduced the public space for dissent. While the RCTV case received international headlines and condemnation, it was hardly the first sign of Chávez restricting press freedom. According to the criminal code, it is now an offense to show disrespect for the president or other government authorities, punishable by up to 20 months in jail. A December 2004 Social Responsibility Law comes close to censorship by imposing “administrative restrictions” on radio and television broadcasts. The measure has been strongly condemned by various groups, including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a body
of the Organization of American States. By raising the disturbing possibility of arbitrary enforcement, such restrictions have had a chilling effect on the press. There is also credible anecdotal evidence of the existence of lists of individuals’ votes that have been used to deny Chávez’s opponents jobs and services.
To rule, Chávez depends chiefly on the military, the institution he knows best and trusts most. Thanks to a specially tailored law, he remains an active military officer, and more than one-third of the country’s regional governments are in the hands of soldiers directly linked to Chávez. As the editor of the daily Tal Cual,
Teodoro Petkoff, has noted, “For all practical purposes, this is a government of the armed forces.” Moreover, the government has been organizing private unarmed militias and developing plans to mobilize up to two million reservists in the name of national defense. Citizen power, as reflected in such groups as
government-sponsored neighborhood “Bolivarian Circles” and communal councils, helps undergird the regime. Chávez tried to consolidate his loose coalition of supportive political parties into the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, but ran into resistance that has temporarily stalled the effort.
Chávez’s strategies have been particularly effective in the face of an opposition that has been consistently inept. It has used various tactics—a coup, a national strike, and a recall referendum—in a quest to unseat Chávez but has lacked a viable strategy, an alternative program, or effective leadership. In April 2002, a
failed coup not only raised questions about the democratic credentials of the opposition; it also gave Chávez the perfect pretext to take full control of the armed forces, purging any dissidents. The strike at the end of 2002 enabled Chávez to establish control over the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
The August 2004 recall referendum ended up enhancing his legitimacy when he won. However, the opposition’s decision to boycott the December 2005 elections for the National Assembly left Chávez’s coalition with control of all 167 seats. While the opposition managed to unify behind a single candidate, Manuel Rosales, Chávez won reelection in 2006 and quickly began to push forward with his vision of “21st-Century Socialism.”
Chávez is frequently compared to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, as well as to Bolívar. The more apt historical precedent is Argentina’s Juan Perón. Perón, too, was a military figure who attempted a coup and used his considerable oratorical skills to attack the political establishment and make rousing appeals to the downtrodden. Even Chávez’s audacious decision to provide discounted home heating oil to poor families in the United States through the Venezuela subsidiary CITGO echoes the actions of the mythic Argentine first
lady who supplied clothes for 600 needy American children in 1949. “Shrewd Evita Perón knew a good chance when she saw one,” Time magazine noted, and the same is true of Chávez. And like Juan Perón, whose Peronism dominates Argentina to this day, Chávez is working to build a social and political force—
Chavismo—that will endure for some time.
BROKEN RECORD
The opposition’s lack of success stems from its past unwillingness even to recognize—let alone devise solutions to—the deep social problems that Chávez has identified. Chávez’s government, meanwhile, has undertaken important social programs and launched workers’ cooperatives in urban slums. Venezuela’s oil wealth has made massive expenditures possible—well over $20 billion since 2002 on programs to provide food, education, and medical care to underserved populations—which have undeniably had some effect.
Regardless of whether the conditions of Venezuela’s poor have marginally improved or marginally worsened under Chávez, his “Bolivarian Revolution” is hardly a sustainable model for Venezuela’s or the region’s predicament. Its approach is fundamentally clientelistic, perpetuating dependence on state patronage rather than promoting broad-based development. Random land-reform measures and occasional confiscations
of private property have had less of an economic than a political and symbolic rationale. Crime, a dominant concern for Venezuelans, has gotten worse.
WORLD ON A STRING
From the outset, it has been clear that Venezuela, with a population of 26 million, is too small a stage for Chávez’s ambitions. Chávez has taken full advantage of a confluence of favorable factors—lots of money, Latin America’s political disarray, US disengagement from the region, widespread hostility to the Bush administration—to construct alliances throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond. He has skillfully managed to establish himself as a global and regional leader, using oil money and brash anti-Americanism to attempt to construct a counterweight to US power.
Chávez’s close friendship with Castro has been integral to this project. In exchange for Cuban teachers and doctors, Chávez furnishes the financially strapped island some 90,000 barrels of oil a day. Castro probably also provides Chávez with strategic advice, along with some military support and intelligence. More and more, Cuba
and Venezuela are important referents for each other. When Venezuelans mention “the embassy,” they now mean the Cuban, not the US, embassy in Caracas.
Chávez’s aggressive oil diplomacy has also enhanced his influence. In 2005, he inaugurated Petrocaribe, under which Venezuela provides up to 200,000 barrels of oil a day to 14 Caribbean nations, with “soft” financing for up to 40 percent of the bill. Chávez has also given high priority to the countries of the continent’s southern cone, especially Argentina and Brazil. Chávez’s alternative projects, designed to challenge US-led free trade arrangements and international financial institutions, appear to be moving forward. The Latin American Bolivarian Trade Arrangement (ALBA) includes Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ecuador, while the Bank of the South also has Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia as members. He has bought billions in Argentine bonds and tens of millions in Ecuadorian bonds, and has substantially underwritten Telesur, a Latin American alternative to CNN.
Chávez’s supporters and opponents have both attributed to him considerable responsibility for the resurgence of Latin America’s left—particularly with the elections of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. There is no question about the affinity and mutual admiration among Morales, Chávez, and Castro; there are already signs of cooperation among them on social and economic issues. Although no hard evidence has yet come to light, critics often charge that Chávez has helped fund the rise of like-minded political figures, such as Morales. It is scarcely a secret that Correa and Ortega regard Chávez with sympathy, though they have taken a more independent approach and cannot be considered clients of Chávez.
Even the conservative Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe—Washington’s staunchest South American ally—has hardly had an unambiguously hostile relationship with Chávez. To be sure, Uribe has charged the Chávez government with failing to cooperate in pursuing Colombian insurgent groups, who use Venezuelan territory
as a sanctuary, and Venezuela’s initial neutrality in the Colombian armed conflict heightened suspicions about where Chávez’s sympathies actually lie. Nevertheless, Chávez has worked closely with Uribe on energy projects, and he has been authorized by Uribe to help mediate a hostage/prisoner swap with the FARC guerrillas—a move that will likely enhance Chávez’s regional standing regardless of the outcome.
The primacy of petroleum has also given Chávez leverage beyond Latin America. He defended his visits with Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi on grounds of Venezuela’s membership in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. He has also worked to forge stronger ties with key countries such as India and China, in keeping with his declared intention to eventually direct Venezuelan oil away from its current principal market—the United States. He has vowed to build a pipeline through Panama for trans-Pacific shipments, and
PDVSA opened an office in Beijing in 2005.
Chávez has also used oil money to buy weapons, which he justifies by invoking the threat of a US invasion. While Washington succeeded in blocking arms purchases from Spain and Brazil, Chávez has not been deterred. He has spent $3 billion on 24 SU-30 fighter jets and 53 combat helicopters from Russia, which is also sending 100,000 AK-47s and constructing a Kalashnikov munitions factory in Venezuela. It is clear that such moves are part of Chávez’s mission to increase his own power vis-à-vis the world’s only superpower.
The most worrying manifestation of that mission has been Chávez’s solidarity with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. He has made several visits to Latin America, at Chávez’s invitation, to help overcome his “international pariah” status. Venezuela’s was one of only three no votes—the others came from Cuba
and Syria—when the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to refer Iran’s nuclear energy case to the UN Security Council in February. Chávez has defended Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy and has declared that Iran and Venezuela are like “brothers who fight for a just world.” The two countries
are negotiating a variety of trade and economic agreements. Chávez, too, has talked about pursuing a nuclear energy program and has sought assistance from Argentina and Brazil to explore that possibility. The emerging alliance with Iran has raised the stakes in Washington’s relations with Chávez.
Although Chávez is buoyed by soaring oil prices and President George W. Bush’s continuing unpopularity, he has not been able to create a unified front to challenge Washington. As Chávez works to forge alliances and build support, Washington has been a strikingly marginal player in the region, disengaged and distracted by other global priorities. In Latin America’s fluid political landscape, most regional leaders tend to indulge Chávez’s regional initiatives, especially if they are backed by substantial resources. Pragmatism reigns.
But at the same time, it is clear that many presidents, such as Lula of Brazil, do not support Chávez’s divisive politics or belligerent posture toward the United States. As a result of the RCTV case, Brazil’s Senate has yet to clear the way for Venezuela tobecome a member of the South American trade group Mercosur. Argentina’s newly elected President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been troubled by Chávez’s alliance with Ahmadinejad, given allegations that Iran orchestrated the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. Despite Uribe’s participation in the Bank of the South and his support of Chávez’s role in a possible hostage deal, Colombia is unlikely to back a Venezuela-led regional coalition opposing the United States. It is by no means clear that even the South American governments most friendly to Chávez—Bolivia and Ecuador—are headed toward political consolidation. The constituent assembly process in Bolivia has been crippled, while Ecuador’s has yet to begin. Neither of those countries possesses Venezuela’s oil
wealth, and both have sharper ethnic and geographic cleavages.
True, Chávez’s grandiose projects are buttressed by seductive rhetoric and record oil prices, but both within Venezuela and throughout the region there are signs of a growing reluctance to accept his outsized political ambitions.
CRUDE AWAKENING
Chávez’s defiance of Washington has been a defining characteristic of his regime from the outset. His unrelenting critique of Venezuela’s old order—which he refers to as “the rancid oligarchy”—has often
focused on the support it received from US administrations over the decades; he sees the US government and the Venezuelan opposition as indistinguishable. His speeches are peppered with virulent anti-American rhetoric, charging Washington with imperialist designs and systematic exploitation of the poor.
Ever since Chávez came to power, Washington has been at a loss as to how to deal with him. Its messages—sometimes conciliatory, sometimes confrontational, usually contradictory—have been largely reactive and show little in the way of strategic thinking. A turning point in the increasingly troubled US-Venezuelan relationship came when the Bush administration endorsed the military coup against Chávez in April 2002. Although precisely what happened at the time remains unclear, Washington’s rush to express approval for such a blatantly unconstitutional act undermined US credibility on the democracy issue. It also distanced the Bush administration from many Latin American allies, who rightfully expressed concern about Chávez’s ouster (which proved temporary).
Since then, Chávez has invoked the incident to make his case that the United States is determined to bring about “regime change” in Venezuela. That argument has been made with even greater conviction—and, for many Latin Americans, with no small measure of plausibility—following the US invasion of Iraq. Chávez has predictably taken advantage of the hugely unpopular Iraq war to pound away even more at the Bush administration.
Yet even as political relations between Caracas and Washington have deteriorated, Venezuelan oil has continued to flow to the United States. So far, all of the apparent antipathy has not affected that key commercial relationship, which has forestalled a more serious clash between the two countries. The United States gets some 14 percent of its imported oil from Venezuela; more than 50 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports go to the United States.
SLOUCHING TOWARD AUTHORITARIANISM
The Colombian magazine Semana, no friend of Chávez, named the Venezuelan president 2005’s “man of the year” for having “modified the political map of the subcontinent, distributed his oil wealth in every direction, challenged the United States, and gone from being perceived as a tropical clown to the Latin American leader with the greatest political influence.” And there is no sign that Chávez has any intention of slowing down.
On the national front, Chávez is resolutely consolidating his autocratic governance model. The National Assembly overwhelmingly approved the articles for a constitutional reform that will be submitted to a national referendum on December 2. The 69 amendments cover private property, social security, central bank autonomy, the length of the workday, and much more. But the centerpiece of the overall package is a reform to allow the Venezuelan president—but no other office holders—to be reelected indefinitely. Other proposed changes would give Chávez instruments to further control the economy and suppress dissent.
There is little doubt that Chávez’s December 2 referendum will pass. After polls showed around 60 percent of Venezuelans opposed the indefinite reelection proposition, Chávez quickly added sweeteners, such as reducing the workday from eight to six hours. The political opposition continues to be divided and ambivalent about whether to participate in what they see as a rigged system. It was a shortsighted 2005 legislative boycott by the opposition that left the National Assembly filled with only Chávez supporters.
Still, Chávez’s not-so-subtle push to be “president for life” has revealed one of the regime’s real soft spots. Compounded by declining oil production, persistent corruption, skyrocketing crime rates, inflation, drug trafficking, and continued infrastructure problems, these weaknesses have deepened fissures within the
government coalition—and created openings for new opposition forces. In the National Assembly, the pro-Chávez Podemos party openly opposed the indefinite reelection measure. More significantly, student leaders—who emerged earlier this year when Chávez failed to renew the license for the RCTV station—have mobilized once again against Chávez’s rush toward authoritarianism. These street demonstrations
have highlighted Venezuela’s sharp polarization (and led Chávez recently to hint that he may break the referendum into two or three blocks of amendments, which would be voted on independently).
Chávez’s capacity to govern the country is not unlimited. A drop in oil prices, although unlikely in the near term, would prove highly problematic for his plans. There are credible reports of large-scale corruption within the regime and, as evidenced by infrastructure problems, major inefficiencies in the economy and the public sector. Shortages in basic commodities have begun to appear sporadically, the result of prolonged price controls. Incipient splits within Chávez’s amorphous coalition could become more pronounced and create problems for governance. And although Chávez himself remains popular, polls indicate that the population is becoming increasingly dissatisfied over a variety of key issues.
Hugo Chávez has certainly not lacked for either grand plans or the resources to carry them out in his nine years as president of Venezuela. So far, he has also deftly deflected criticism and overcome opposition. With his newest initiatives, however, he may be overreaching—threatening to stall his project both domestically
and internationally.
WHO’S AFRAID OF HUGO CHÁVEZ?
But for now, Chávez’s influence will probably continue. And countering that influence would require recognizing that it originates not only in Chávez’s ability to shape Venezuela’s and the region’s agenda, but also in the failure of other governments to do so. His legitimate and well-expressed concern for social questions strikes a chord in Latin America, especially in view of the rather dismal condition of education and healthcare in many countries in the region. Against such a backdrop of unattended needs, Chávez’s appeal is hardly a mystery.
Offsetting Chávez’s influence would require confronting the acute social problems that Chávez has shed light on. His diagnosis of social ills may be on the mark, and his intentions may be sincere. But the recipe he is offering is little more than snake oil. Chávez has been unable to devise a sustainable model to address social problems effectively. Even if some of Venezuela’s poorest citizens are better off today, Chávez’s record has been disappointing given the opportunity presented by the oil windfall.
Washington should not refrain from discree tly registering its opposition to some of Chávez’s more blatant violations of the rule of law and the democratic process. If completely unchecked, Chávez’s program will have damaging results both domestically and regionally. But the United States has little leverage in shaping
Venezuela’s internal political dynamics—and, given the Bush administration’s lack of popularity in the region as a whole, little ability to “confront” Chávez directly. Instead, a US strategy must be built around efforts to rally the support of other Latin American governments to address the conditions that gave rise to Chávez in the first place. Rather than expending so much energy denouncing the presence of Cuban doctors and teachers in Venezuelan slums—a popular program that, although not a transferable model, brings benefits to some of Venezuela’s poor—Washington should start proving that it has better ideas.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs and as a November 7, 2006, update on www.foreignaffairs.org. It was further updated for Chronogram by the author in November 2007. Copyright 2007 Council on Foreign Relations, publisher of Foreign Affairs. All rights reserved. Distributed by
Tribune Media Services.
This article appears in December 2007.
